The New Cinephilia

Kino-Agora #8

by Girish Shambu

Cinephilia has recently experienced a powerful resurgence, one enabled by new media technologies of the digital revolution. One strong continuity between today’s “new cinephilia” and the classical cinephilia of the 1950s is the robust sociability which these new technologies have facilitated. Each activity of today’s cinephilic practice – viewing, thinking, reading and writing about films – is marked by an unprecedented amount of social interaction facilitated by the Internet. As with their classical counterparts, the thoughts and writings of today’s cinephiles are born from a vigorous and broad-ranging cinephilic conversation. Further, by dramatically lowering the economic barriers to publication, the Internet has also made possible new hybrid forms and outlets of cinephilic writing that draw freely from scholarly, journalistic and literary models. This book both describes and theorises how and where cinephilia lives and thrives today.

Girish Shambu is a cinephile and Associate Professor of Management at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York. He runs a community-oriented film blog named “girish” at girishshambu.blogspot.com, and co-edits, with Adrian Martin, the on-line cinema journal LOLA. His writings have appeared in Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, Artforum.com, Cineaste and in the collection Cinephilia in the Age of Digital Reproduction, Volume 1: Film, Pleasure and Digital Culture (Wallflower Press).

Genres: Film, Nonfiction

49 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2014

Reviews

[Parnian]

از یادداشت نوید پورمحمدرضا در انتها حتی بیشتر از خود متن اصلی کتاب لذت بردم. کاش کتابی درباره تجربه سینه‌فیل بودن در ایران بنویسه.

[Amirhossein]

رانسیر با یادآوری نخستین سال‌های سینه‌فیلی خود در پاریس، به این نکته اشاره می‌کند که دلیل اصلی نوشتن سینه‌فیل‌ها و منتقدان درباره فیلم‌ها به حفظ خاطره‌شان از تماشای فیلم‌ها برمی‌گردد. در آن دوران که معلوم نبود دوباره کی فرصت دیدار با یک فیلم پیش می‌آید، ابژه سینه‌فیلی زودگذر و قیمتی بود. مجموع نوشته‌ها درباره یک فیلم در روزنامه‌ها، مجلات، و کتاب‌ها بخشی از این حافظه تعاملی سینه‌فیلی بود که شیفتگان فیلم می‌توانستند بدان بازگردند، و خاطره‌شان از فیلم‌ها را در ذهن زنده نگه دارند.

[Reza Gheysarnejad]

البته من ترجمه‌ی فارسی این کتاب را خواندم که هنوز گویا در گودریدز وارد نشده.
همان‌طور که از نامش برمی‌آید، کتابی است بیشتر برای سینه‌فیل‌ها؛ که اگر جز این باشید، بعید است از دنبال کردن مجموعه یادداشت‌های کوتاه شامبو در این کتاب دچار ملال نشوید. اما برای دسته‌ی اول، این یادداشت‌ها یک تور جالب در دنیای «نوشتن از فیلم‌ها»ست.
ترجمه‌ی پورمحمدرضا هم اگرچه متن انگلیسی‌اش را ندیده‌ام، می‌توان گفت در بدترین حالت فارسیِ سالمی دارد.

[Mohsen Nikbakht]

سه ستاره برای کتاب
یه ستاره هم برای درد دل و خاطره های مترجم توی اخر کتاب

[Furkan Balcı]

great premise and the text opens itself up gracefully... however, at the end, it is a bit heartbreaking to see that the book didn't tackle potentials of said premise. political implications of this new cinephilia stated in the afterword and manifesto felt a bit over-reduced to have a statement about recent gender and identity discussions about the author cinema. adressing these topics are imporant, for sure, however I felt like the concept itself has a great capacity to both contain and transcend these matters.

[Jay Hinman]

This is a relatively short 2014 book by critic Girish Shambu, whom I was intrigued by when I saw some of his incisive commentary on Christian Petzold on the Criterion Channel. Shambu explores how the consumption and discussion of movies has evolved in the internet age, with a strong (and positive-leaning) emphasis on the social aspects of cinephilia, both in the age of campus film clubs in the 50s and 60s and cinephilic social networks like Letterboxd or “film Twitter” today. He’s pretty bullish on cinephilia in the 21st century, cinephilia itself being an entirely different proposition than “the future of film production / distribution / display in the age of Netflix” - something subject to incessant and not entirely undeserved hand-wringing wherever film is written about.

Shambu elaborates on our newfound abilities to critically interact with films from Africa or China, say, with fans of same - without having to wait for a yearly film festival to come to town. The barrier to entry has been dramatically lowered, and he thinks that’s worth crowing about. So do I. A good one-sitting read if it sounds like something you’d be interested in.

[Arash]

واسه من پس‌گفتاری که خود آقای پورمحمدرضا در انتهای کتاب نوشته بودن به اندازه متن اصلی کتاب جذاب بود... شایدم بیشتر!

[Charlie]

An excellent gloss on the way that film-experience has changed in the early decades of the internet, a report from the frontlines that will hopefully be of use as a historical document as well. It's definitely short but it probably didn't need to be much longer, either.

[z]

- oddly focused on effect of social media on film criticism, more of a justification of social media than anything else, though film references litter each page
- a proper definition of film criticism is writing which improves a reader's ability to under how film works. a cinephile is someone receptive to this work, but that's not what Girish has in mind here. missed opportunity.